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Why do so few people major in computer science?

danwang.co

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Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#101

Post by smcl »

maxsilver wrote: post #55
cjonas wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a CS degree from a small liberal arts school. I've only had to do a handful of interviews, but they've always been extremely mellow (my last one took place on a chairlift) and I've been practically begged to take each job. Then again, I'm in Wyoming, not Silicon Valley so that may have something to do with it.

I think it's very much based on supply. In Michigan with 10 years experience, I don't usually have trouble landing work. In some cases, they're practically begging people not to relocate away for the much higher wages. But when I've applied to positions in Seattle, even lower-end ones, I've always been rejected. Across a dozen companies in coastal markets, everyone seems looking for any reason or excuse, no matter ho…

Maybe since the salary expectations are so much higher in SV/NY and Seattle* HR folks feel they have to be seen to be much more "rigorous" whether that is the case or not ("we had 100 applicants and hired the top 2")?

* = I picked the three big pricey "coastal" US places that came to mind, it's entirely possible we're talking about different places :-)

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#102

Post by mempko »

romanovcode wrote: post #16
david-cako wrote: post #14

A better question is "why do we care". Software is about the only career I can think of where there are movements created to inject social status into it so that people get into it who are only interested so long as it comes with social status/trendiness. The major also doesn't fix the thought process. You either have it or you don't.

I think it is also the only career which people try to inject diversity just for the sake of it. Maybe I just live in developer bubble and don't know any better, but I've never seen a movement like "Girls do Plumbing!", "Black girls construction bootcamp" or "Mining for equality!".

It's not "for the sake of it", diversity brings insanely great benefits. Lack of diversity is likely why most software produced by this industry is, well, shit.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#104

Post by SkyMarshal »

simonsarris wrote: post #11

Slight note about Dan Wang picking 2005: That was the peak of CS degrees awarded because it's 4/5 years after the height of the dot-com bubble. So the upward bump in the mid-2000's is somewhat explainable as an anomaly. I think his point 1 is underrated. CS degrees are flat because aptitude is flat. You can compare CS degrees to other degrees over time at nsf.gov: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/#/report…

What's interesting to me about that data is the high rate of biological and agricultural sciences grads, relative to all other sciences. CS grad rates seem to fall right about where they should on XKCD's Purity Scale [1] (if CS had been included in it). 2004 was an outlier for CS, but it has reverted to its mean since.

But bio and ag sciences are beating out Psychology, which is a bit of a reversal. Biology isn't easy, especially not any program with a requirement for organic chemistry. Could that be b/c the big midwest and southwest universities (Iowa, Texas A&M, etc) have large bio/ag programs to support that industry in their region?

[1]:https://www.xkcd.com/435/

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#105

Post by kutkloon7 »

kevan wrote: post #97
kutkloon7 wrote: post #79

I majored in computer science, and I don't feel like I've learned anything. Every time there was an opportunity to learn something cool (mathematical theory behind cryptography, assembly language, details of a processor, the cache, or a communication protocol) or useful, it was glanced over as 'technical details'. Instead, I was introduced to many, many small topics (programming, graphics, databases, algorithms, user…

I don't think it's fair to say that computer science isn't hard when you openly admit that you didn't go into any depth in the topics. That's like me claiming the field of Mathematics isn't very hard because the bog- standard calculus courses I took weren't very difficult. Maybe we should be asking whether computer science as we know it is too broad of a field to meaningfully explore in a Bachelor's degree.

True, you can make it as difficult as you want. But generally, math, physics, and engineering programs are much harder.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#106

Post by _delirium »

simonsarris wrote: post #11

Slight note about Dan Wang picking 2005: That was the peak of CS degrees awarded because it's 4/5 years after the height of the dot-com bubble. So the upward bump in the mid-2000's is somewhat explainable as an anomaly. I think his point 1 is underrated. CS degrees are flat because aptitude is flat. You can compare CS degrees to other degrees over time at nsf.gov: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/#/report…

Re: the choice of 2005 as origin, if you rebase on 2009, then CS degree growth looks on par with other STEM fields. Thus I think is's misleading to say CS majoring is "flat". At a certain end-to-end view it is, but that obscures that it crashed, and is now rapidly growing, not that it's been stagnant and unchanging.

In the early 2000s it was widely perceived as the economically smart thing to go into a technical field other than CS, especially petroleum engineering, chemical engineering, and similar areas, or maybe even better, a non-technical field like law. They had higher pay and were seen as more stable employment options. CS employment was seen by many people as unlikely to ever fully recover from the dotcom crash, partly because of mass outsourcing. So unsurprisingly, new enrollment numbers were low, and some departments at smaller schools even closed. Then from around 2005, CS began to be seen as a lucrative again, and enrollment has been steadily rising every year since then. Universities have responded likewise by reopening CS departments, hiring more faculty in existing ones, and increasing class sizes (so enrollment growth is actually considerably outpacing faculty growth).

This does not look to me like a market that fails to respond to economic incentives, but exactly like one that does respond. Maybe it ought to respond even faster, although if it did in general, the CS-degree crash of the 2000s might've been even deeper than it was.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#107

Post by lordnacho »

The grief factor of learning to code is on a different scale to every other major. One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down, and you realise this in the first day of practical exercises.

Even if you are of the opinion that CS is math, and coding doesn't come into it, you will hit a coding wall early on.

In fact, every exercise in CS has this problem. You add a new thing (eg inheritance), and it breaks. But not only that, it might be broken because of a banal little syntax problem.

And that's just what you consider code. If you put in the wrong compiler flags, it breaks. If you can't link because something needed rebuilding, it breaks. Want to avoid it? Learn how make works. Huge number of options, which you won't understand, because you're a novice.

Oh and learn git, too. And Linux. Just so you can hand in the homework.

Compare this to the rest of university. I'll use my own experience.

- Engineering subjects tend to revolve around a small number of vignettes. Here's an aircraft engine in thermo. Draw some boundaries, apply some equations. If you get it wrong, your tutor can still see if you were going the right way. Once you've learned the relevant points, it's not hard doing some rearrangements and plugging in some numbers.

- Economics essays are basically bullet points. Miss one out, you still have an essay. Which you can hand in without knowing git.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#108

Post by swiley »

cs702 wrote: post #44

One possible answer no one has mentioned so far is that there many smart, capable people who do NOT want to spend hours every day sitting at a desk, in front of a computer, focused on code, with limited human interaction... so they pursue majors in other fields.

I really kind of regret majoring in computer science because of this.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#109

Post by alvarosevilla95 »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #99
kutkloon7 wrote: post #79

I majored in computer science, and I don't feel like I've learned anything. Every time there was an opportunity to learn something cool (mathematical theory behind cryptography, assembly language, details of a processor, the cache, or a communication protocol) or useful, it was glanced over as 'technical details'. Instead, I was introduced to many, many small topics (programming, graphics, databases, algorithms, user…

I disagree with the fact that computer science degree is 'not very hard'... It's way more difficult(if done correctly) than probably almost every other degree except physics, math, and maybe chemical engineering. I don't know where you got your degree but I felt like I was challenged immensely in my curriculum..with algorithms, upper level maths, cryptography, distributed systems, etc. etc.... but I really worked 80…

I agree with you. Computer Science at the appropriate school is a really challenging and gratifying experience.

I would also add that university in general, is more about approaching new and hard topics, and finding a good way to learn and digest them. In computer science you also get to do it facing fascinating topics like lambda calculus or the mathematics behind cryptography.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#110

Post by SkyMarshal »

overgard wrote: post #83

I think the problem is how the subject is taught. I remember my first CS class, and there was quite a bit of diversity that quickly disappeared after the first test when people started dropping the class. (I'm pretty sure something like half the class disappeared, and I don't think this is at all unusual). So why did all those people initially find interest, and then disappear? I remember the way they taught it was V…

This reminds me of A Scheme Story, referenced at the end of PG's essay Beating the Averages.

http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html

http://paulgraham.com/avg.html

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